For decades, the Jewish people has used the slogan "Never Again!" to express its determination never again to be persecuted, ignored and massacred as happened during World War II. But "Never Again!" has both its particular and universal aspects, and Holocaust survivors often have been at the forefront of people calling attention to later genocides around the world and to bigotry and racism in our own country as well.
Remembering their suffering, Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry, along with Seattle University's Campus Ministries, annually convenes a Holocaust and Genocide Remembrance Day Commemoration called Yom HaShoah, as both a reminder and a call to action.
Yom HaShoah is Hebrew for "Day of the Catastrophe". "Shoah" has been used since the Middle Ages to describe massacres of Jews and it became the standard Hebrew term for the murder of European Jewry as early as the early 1940s. "Holocaust" on the other hand comes from the Greek for "burnt offering" but also came to assume a wider sense of "massacre" or "the destruction of a large number of people" since the mid-1800s. Following Israel's lead, "Shoah" is used exclusively to refer to the European Jewish tragedy and "holocaust" to any genocide before or since.
2013 GatheringApril 8-12, 2013 | Seattle University Campus
Join us in commemorating Yom HaShoah with our brothers and sisters from Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities, as well as other backgrounds. For more information on this annual gathering, please contact firstname.lastname@example.org or call (206) 296-5330.